


Angels Hate the Halo

by anarchycox



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Feels, Gen, Or romantic, Snark, can read the end as platonic soul mates, harry is always the reason merlin is bald
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22236487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchycox/pseuds/anarchycox
Summary: Harry has a new handler, who swears he is Harry's guardian angel.Complete bullshit, right?
Relationships: Harry Hart | Galahad & Merlin
Comments: 26
Kudos: 98





	Angels Hate the Halo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thenerdyindividual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenerdyindividual/gifts).



“Excuse me, but who the hell are you?” Harry shouted. “Give me back Merlin!” He shot blindly out the door.

“I am the new Merlin,” Merlin replied. “And in fact I am your guardian angel and since that has already been an exhausting enterprise, I rather thought about seeing whether a hands on approach might serve the task a bit better. Now then, out that window to your left.”

“I’m on the third floor!@

“And they have been doing the gardens just below that window, there are large sacks of soil underneath, that make it a both a cushion and a shorter fall. Or you can stay in that room and die. As your guardian angel I suggest you take the leap - I’m hardly likely to be causing your death am I?”

“Fair point,” Harry said and threw a chair at the window and then ran - leapt. He kept his knees soft and rolled as he hit the bags. He was up and running soon in the woods where it would be harder to track him. “That wasn’t soil!”

“Oh?”

“It was bloody manure.”

“My mistake. Consider penance for that horse you stole when you were 10 and broke your neck.”

“That isn’t in my file.” Harry thought he had run enough, and took a break against a tree.

“Yes it is, just not one you’ve seen. Coordinates for your extraction point. And you are going to start taking more care of your life. It has been fucking exhausting being your guardian angel, you know.”

“Of course,” Harry replied. When he spoke to Chester about the new Merlin’s bizarre sense of humour, he was told that everyone considered the Scots to be a rather dour but talented replacement. Harry decided not to mention the guardian angel quips.

*

“When I died, I had a full head of gorgeous hair, you know,” Merlin snapped. “Thick dark, an elegant widow’s peak. Women swooned over that hair.”

“You mean when you died and became my guardian angel?” Merlin had been making these jokes for a decade, but Harry still wasn’t sure about the punchline. It was a very long set up for a joke.

“You are my nineteenth charge, and by far the most difficult,” Merlin could be heard typing. “How do you lose hair after you die, Harry? How? I have sent inquires but since I went a bit against orders by coming to deal with you directly, they aren’t exactly answering.”

“Nineteen charges? Perhaps you are a piss poor guardian angel,” Harry was busy trying to diffuse the bomb, and new Merlin’s typing was searching for the key code out of the room Harry had been locked in.

“Or I’ve been doing it for a few hundred years, and can say in the history of the United Kingdom, you are the fucking worst charge any angel has ever had. And just fucking cut the green wire!”

Harry cut the wire. “I bet at least 8 of those charges died young from your incompetence,” he said. The door to the room opened and he went out, determined to escape.

“No, only one did,” Merlin’s voice was different. A tone he had never heard from the man before.

Heartbroken.

“We knew something was coming but no one could anticipate the Fire. It came up so fast, took so much. She was 11 and was going to be a singer. And I couldn’t, I didn’t -” Merlin stopped talking.

“Which fire?” Harry asked as he slid in the shadows. 

“The Great Fire ‘66,” Merlin replied. “It is a bit cliched but she loved Greensleeves.” He sang a few lines of it softly.

Harry remembered his history lesson and guessed Merlin was talking about the fire of 1666. “You have a lovely voice.”

“Agent, the next left if you please.”

“Still I hardly think I am the most difficult human, that has ever had a guardian angel. There must have been worse.”

Merlin just snorted and Harry smiled a bit, and made sure to make his exit a bit more fraught than it really needed to be, just to distract the man.

One day he’d really figure out the joke.

*

Harry woke up, well more precisely the humming of Greensleeves woke him up. He was feeling light as a feather, which meant he was on excellent drugs. He liked these drugs. He was sure he wouldn’t like the reason for these drugs but right now he’d enjoy the drugs.

He opened his eyes, “I can see your halo,” he said.

“That is the medical wing lighting, along with the drugs you are on. They always give you a bit of a hallucination problem.”

“It’s a shiny halo, above your shiny head,” Harry said dreamily.

“Harry, I hid the halo when I took the more hands on approach to your case. Bloody hate the thing anyways, the glare is a bitch when you are trying to read.”

“Where’d you hide it then?” Harry asked. “Is it in a drawer?”

“Angel can adapt the halo but not remove.”

“So?”

“Harry, go to sleep, you got blown up?”

Harry pouted and started to cry. “Why don’t you want me to know where your pretty shiny is?”

“Fine, it’s around my dick, Harry. I turned my halo into cock jewelry.”

Harry laughed himself to sleep. His angel was funny.

*

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I missed it, I bloody missed it.” Harry was sitting on the ground, in a corner of Merlin’s office, returned from seeing Michelle and Eggsy. “Why did you miss it?” Harry had a horrible thought. “Did you make him do that? Is that how you guardianed me?” He sneered. “No of course not, you aren’t an angel, you are just a shitty human like the rest of us. Some sort of joke to pass the time on the comms. And we are done with it now. Never again.”

Merlin sat next to him. “Very well.” He wrapped an arm over Harry’s shoulders. Harry realized it was the first time Merlin had actually touched him. “But I give you this. Free will, Harry. I couldn’t have made him take such an action. It is too big. That was all Lee. And now he can rest, and his angel can rest.”

“Then what fucking good is a guardian angel?” Harry snapped. “What fucking use are you if you can’t save your charges life?”

“We can, but you have no idea the strength and power it takes to divert you, keep you safe. And we have to be able to see it coming. When you were 17, you were following a pretty boy. So much so, all you wanted was to catch up to him, ask him his number. You didn’t notice the delivery truck backing up. He was going to hit the gas instead of the break. And you would have been dead.”

“I remember that, an old lady. The bag broke and I helped her collect the things. This truck came out fast and I remember thinking close shave that.”

“Breaking her bag, I was unconscious for a month. And it can only be done, if you are certain it isn’t their time, that there is the potential for more in their life.” Merlin’s hand was rubbing up and down his arm. “Next time, I’m requesting they stop giving me heroes and fools. I am just bloody tired, maybe a nice century long nap. 20 down you get to take that you know. One after you, and I get a break for a hundred years.”

“No need to guess which you think I am,” Harry tried to joke. “Can you keep an eye on Eggsy?”

“No two charges for an angel, Harry.”

“Just as Merlin? Keep an eye?” Harry looked at him. “Please for this fool of yours?” Harry closed his eyes and when Merlin’s arm pulled away, leaned his head back against the wall. He felt lips press a soft kiss to his forehead.

“Harry, you are not one of my fools,” Merlin whispered and was gone.

*

“Merlin, this isn’t your fault,” Harry promised as he stared at Valentine. “You were incredible.”

“What the fuck? Who is Merlin?” Valentine glared at him. “I was going to quip man, why are you ruining it?”

“Because Merlin needs to know I am grateful for every extra minute he gave me,” Harry looked at Valentine.

“No more extra, Mr. Hart,” Valentine said and shot, but it was not the dead centre head shot he intended to do, an odd muscle spasm in his arm, jerked it just a little bit.

*

The man called himself Merlin, and Harry didn’t recognize him at all. Not a glimmer, but the man didn’t seem as upset about it as the one called Eggsy. More resigned? Accepting. He looked tired though, a bone deep weary, that Harry sometimes felt at night. “You look...empty.” Harry blinked, that wasn’t what he had meant to say at all.

“I lost something rather important a bit ago. I made a choice, and I don’t regret it.” Merlin was looking at him so intensely as he said that, and Harry felt like he was somehow that choice. “People didn’t like that and changed somethings. I had forgotten how much mortality fucking sucks. Keeping a body running is a bitch and a half. But no plague really anymore, so that’s something.”

“Isn’t it? Excuse me, I’m needed in PT.” Harry looked at him. “You are different.” It was a foolish thing to say, he didn’t know the man.

“I am as I once was, before we knew each other,” was what he said. “Pity whoever they put on your duty now.” Merlin nodded and left.

*

“No, Eggsy, it is fine, Merlin will be fine, this is actually excellent.” Harry was almost beaming, finally something in their favour.

“Harry, Merlin is standing on a fucking landmine, how is everything bloody excellent.”

“Because he is a guardian angel, he can’t actually die.” Harry almost giggled. “Because you never aged, you never ate. And I lived. I lived. Which means you are my guardian angel.”

“Aye, I was. Eggsy go over there,” Merlin pointed. “You’ll know when to move.” 

Eggsy looked at them in confusion, but trusting the two men he hurried away.

Harry continued to smile at Merlin. “So, what is the plan?”

“The plan is you go over there, and you finish this. And know that I loved you, you impossible man, and was proud to have been your angel.” Merlin smiled at him. “Think they give you the halo again if you die a second time?”

Harry frowned. “I don’t understand.” He tried to put it all together, and remembered the conversation they had had a few days ago. “Merlin? Mortality? How are you mortal?”

“Because Valentine wasn’t supposed to miss, your time was up.” Merlin shrugged and seemed at peace. “But well, never been the best at following the rules. And I was sure despite what the timelines all suggested, the world could use more Harry Hart.”

“Merlin,” Harry firmed his jaw, he would not cry, as all the pieces were put together. “You were punished with humanity again.”

“At least it won’t have been for very long.” Merlin smiled. “Be kind, to your angel, okay Harry? Now go.”

“No.”

“Harry, go,” Merlin urged, and Harry realized the emptiness he had seen had been the lack of grace that had always surrounded him. 

“I always wanted to see your halo,” Harry tried to joke.

“Is that just a way to say you had wanted to see my dick?” Merlin joked. He gave a nod and Harry moved to his position. Merlin wasn’t singing Greensleeves as he died, and that just was so weird. Harry kept thinking about the change in song, he had only ever heard Merlin sing Greensleeves.

After they destroyed Poppy’s plans, Harry went for a walk, determined to find Merlin. And he did. “How the fuck are you still alive?” Harry shouted. He ran to Merlin and started to triage where legs no longer were.

“Fuck if I know,” Merlin snapped back. “I was looking forward to being dead. Dead you don’t have to worry about how you shit your trousers when you get blown up, because you are dead, but looks like we are dealing with that aren’t we?”

Harry was tightening his belt around one leg and screaming for Eggsy who eventually came running. They got Merlin to the plane and the man passed out. And for the first time in his life he prayed.

*

“What’s heaven like?”

“Happy,” Merlin replied. He didn’t look up from his book.

“That must have been appalling for you,” Harry smiled a bit. “Is it all fluffy clouds and harps?”

“Depends on the day. You’ll find out in the end.”

Harry snorted, “With everything I’ve done, you really think I’m going to heaven?”

“I know I am, and like fuck I’m enduring all that happy without you at my side. Figure we’ll petition, joint guardian angels for the Kingsman organization.”

“Is that possible?” Harry frowned thoughtfully. “Would they allow us to do something like that?”

“I’d like to see them stop us,” Merlin replied. 

"Wait, that sort of implies that you'd be fine spending all of eternity with me around you? Me, who made you lose all your hair."

"Used to you," was all Merlin said.

Harry smiled. "I am used to you as well. Though of course I will wear a halo properly, and dashingly. And never around my dick."

Merlin snorted. "Give it a few centuries, and see. You get creative with that fucker."

"I guess we'll find out."

"I guess we will."


End file.
